


paths not taken

by darlingargents



Category: Addicted Series - Krista Ritchie & Becca Ritchie, Calloway Sisters - Krista Ritchie & Becca Ritchie
Genre: Abortion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book: Hothouse Flower, Character Study, F/M, Pregnancy, Relationship Study, The Tequila Scene Except More Fucked Up, Unhealthy Relationships, and get out my feelings on rose's character arc and reaction to her pregnancy, in which i deconstruct why rose/connor doesn't work for me as a ship, this is not a positive portrayal of rose/connor. this is a warning. do not bitch at me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 15:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14622078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: Rose is not ready.





	paths not taken

**Author's Note:**

> a couple of things before i delve into this:
> 
> i have always had issues with the way rose's pregnancy was dealt with. lily as well, but rose in particular, mostly because i REALLY do not like the idea that not wanting children is a character flaw that has to be overcome in order to grow as a person.
> 
> i am not OPPOSED to the idea that rose really was fit to be a mother, and i don't absolutely hate the way canon went, but the way everything went down has bothered me from the first time i read it. this is not to say that it's terrible or that my version is So Much Better, not at all — i wrote this to... expel my own demons, i guess? get out my feelings? because i won't stop being upset, so i thought maybe this would help.
> 
> to be absolutely clear: yes, the tags do mean that rose gets an abortion. i reread a few parts of HHF while writing this, and it specifically says that she considers it and lily talked her out of it, so i don't think it's entirely OOC. however, i feel like connor quite possibly *is* OOC, just because i have a lot of issues with his character and his relationship with rose, and it certainly came out while writing this. shrug emoji. sorry.
> 
> (also my sincerest apologies that the timeline is all over the place; i haven't reread HHF in its entirety for at least a year and probably longer. there are some things that got switched around solely for narrative purposes, and also because i remembered it wrong the first time and so my plan got thrown off and i decided that fuck it, it's a canon divergence, things can be different.)
> 
> Disclaimer: the tequila standoff scene, from when Connor knocks Rose's shot out of her hand to when Lo says "What?", is pulled directly from canon. After that, it diverges. None of that dialogue is mine, and the bits around it are slightly different but still essentially what happened in canon.

Rose knows every action and reaction of her body. She knows what’s right, what’s healthy for her — she can notice herself getting sick at fifty paces and she can always tell exactly when her PMS starts.

Which is why she knows almost immediately that something is wrong, and even though logic tells her it’s extremely unlikely, all she can think is _pregnant_.

She tells herself it’s impossible. (It’s not.) She tells herself that she has a loving husband and family so it wouldn’t matter anyway. (It does.) She tells herself she can handle it. She’s Rose Calloway Cobalt, she’s been running her own companies since she was a teenager, she went to fucking Princeton — she can handle _anything_ life could throw at her.

(She can’t.)

The worst part — the part that makes her sick to her goddamn stomach when she finally caves and buys the pregnancy test, in cash, at a pharmacy while on a grocery run, ripping the receipt to shreds and mentioning a headache that she needed Advil for once she gets home — is that she knows that Connor would be beyond happy if she told him.

Except maybe the real worst part is she thinks he already knows.

Because he doesn’t know her body or her signals as well as she does — it’s her body, and god fucking damn it, no man is going to know her better than she knows herself — but it’s a close thing, and he can obviously tell that something is off. If anything, her period is late, and he would have noticed that. He always notices that.

She downs an Advil in the bathroom before bed and ignores him calling her for just a moment. Stares into the mirror.

There’s no use in asking why, because there’s no answer that would satisfy her, but she does anyway, just for a moment. _Why_?

 

She hasn’t used the pregnancy test yet, even though she bought it four days ago. Her period is eight days late. She feels _wrong_.

She snipes at Connor every five minutes, and knows she’s being unreasonable and bitchy and everything that she had promised herself she wouldn’t be in her marriage, but she just — she can’t. She can’t deal with him right now, because she looks at his face and imagines the smile on his face when he finds out. Her stomach lurches painfully imagining the warm, soft, heart-warmed smile of a man finally getting the beginning of his dream life. The life he always wanted.

So she avoids him at every turn, knowing it’s only making him more suspicious, but not being able to stop.

 

Lily tells her that she’s pregnant, through tears and trembling. Rose comforts her through it, only half-present. It’s the image of Lily’s tears that finally gets her to open the pregnancy test package.

Her hands shake as she tears the package open. She makes a pile of the packaging — to be disposed of in a public place — and takes the test.

The plus sign almost seems to taunt her.

She calls Lily. “We’re going to the doctor tomorrow.”

 

She tells Lily in the car. Lily cries again, and so does she.

Funny. Rose has always know that over-emotion is a common symptom of pregnancy, but she’d never thought it would affect _her_.

They get a flat tire. She almost claws Connor’s eyes out. Such is the life.

 

The eventual gynecologist visit confirms it. They’re both pregnant.

Rose cries in the car for fifteen minutes after she drops Lily off at Superheroes & Scones. Then she wipes her eyes and drives home.

 

She’s three weeks along. She lies in bed next to Connor, listening to him breathe, her fingers pressing into her stomach. Her hands shake when she lifts them.

_I can’t do this_ , she thinks. _I can’t do this_.

 

Rose calls Lily a couple days later and they go for a drive. She keeps her eyes on the road when she says, “I want to get an abortion.”

Lily inhales sharply. Rose can’t look at her. She flips on her turn signal. Turns.

Lily still isn’t speaking.

They drive for another ten minutes before Lily says, “I can’t.”

“I know.”

“I — if that’s your decision, I can’t imagine, but I can’t do that—”

“Lily. I know.” Rose pulls over and parks on the side of a suburban road. She finally looks at Lily, who is chewing her bottom lip and looks like she’s trying not to cry. “I’m not expecting anything of you. I just wanted to tell you.”

Lily blows out a shaky breath. “Are you sure?”

If anything, Lily’s reaction has only made her resolve stronger. “Yes. I think so.”

Lily looks at her. “What about Connor?”

Rose looks away. “What about him? It’s not his body. It’s not his decision.”

“It’s his child—”

“Not a child yet.” Rose grips the steering wheel and feels the leather creak under her hands. “I said I would consider having kids. Later. Not yet. I’m not ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready, but I’m definitely not ready right now.”

She thinks, for a wild moment, that this could’ve been avoided if she’d just stood her fucking ground and made him wear a condom.

_Fuck him_ , she thinks, and it’s the first time since they’ve married that she’s thought something like that at him. Her stomach drops out from under her, and she feels like she’s floating. Threatening men is second instinct, but this rise of sheer, sudden hatred is new. It’s frightening.

“Are you going to tell him?” Lily asks quietly.

Rose pulls away from the curb. Merges back onto the highway and heads home.

She doesn’t answer.

 

She had planned to ask Lily to come with her, but at this point she thinks Lily might actually tell Connor if she does. So she goes alone.

 

She gets her period again right before the trip.

 

Lily, crying her eyes out, shaking in the freezing water of a bathtub, tells Lo that she’s pregnant.

Rose can feel Connor’s eyes on her. Her period started again last night. Connor doesn’t have any way to know that.

She feels like she’s going to throw up, and she knows that if she does it’ll just be more confirmation. That his family is starting, that his life is finally beginning—

She locks herself away and cries again.

 

Connor knocks the shot glass out of her hand.

“ _You’ve already taken this far enough_ ,” he says in French, and Rose feels like there’s acid chewing its way through her body. _He knows. He thinks he knows._

_I’m about to break his heart._

“ _Just say it_.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says.

He cups her face. “ _You have nothing to fear_.”

She pulls away. His brows furrow, but he respects her space just for the moment. He stares at her, and forces her to face him when she tries to look away.

“ _You’re pregnant_.”

Ryke spits out his drink.

For a split second, all thoughts of this conversation are driven out of Rose’s mind as she and Connor turn to look at Ryke. Everyone at the table is staring at him. Rose feels heat creep up her neck.

_He knows. He’s heard everything._

_Fuck._

“Why are you fucking looking at me like that?” Ryke asks. Connor rolls his eyes.

“ _You know why_.”

Ryke’s gaze hardens. “You should be less focused on me and more fucking concerned about your pregnant wife, who almost drank a tequila shot to fucking one-up you.”

Rose feels the ground drop out from under her.

“What?” Lo says.

“No,” Rose feels herself say.

“You don’t have to deny it—” Connor starts, and Rose cuts him off.

“No. I’m not pregnant.” Before anyone can react, she grabs the closest tequila shot and downs it. Connor looks like she just hit him. Lily blinks back tears, and Lo suddenly notices her reaction.

“Lil?”

“You did it,” Lily says to Rose. She can’t speak under that horrified gaze. “You actually — you didn’t tell me?”

“I couldn’t,” Rose hears herself say. She feels like she’s out of her body. She can’t look back at Connor. “I couldn’t tell you, I had to do it by myself—”

“No,” Connor says. He grabs Rose, turns her to face him, to stare into his dark, furious eyes. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Because of course he knows. Of course he came to the conclusion immediately. Of course he figured it out as soon as his primary hypothesis was proven incorrect.

“I can’t,” Rose says.

He stands and leaves.

A moment later, Rose throws her napkin aside and follows him outside.

It’s a hot night, enough that she doesn’t shiver even without a jacket as she follows him to where he stands next to the building, one hand braced against the brick as he leans in. His breathing, when she gets closer, is audible and ragged.

He sounds like he might cry, which is terrifying, because she’s never seen him cry before. But he sounds like he’s going to. He sounds like his whole world is crashing down around him.

She reaches out to touch his arm. “Connor—”

“Don’t touch me,” he says, pulling back. His words aren’t quite a snap, but something close to it. She blinks, shocked for a moment that he would speak to her like this. That he would move away from her touch like it’s poison.

_Well, of course he would_ , she finds herself thinking as he deliberately keeps his eyes away from her. _I just killed his baby_.

She bites her tongue to stop the hysterical laugh that feels like it’s going to explode out her chest. If she laughs now, she’ll lose him, and as horrible as everything feels right now, it’ll be so much worse without him.

“I can’t,” he says. His words are choked off, shaky, more unstable than Rose had thought he was even capable of. “I can’t — I don’t understand how you could do this.”

“I wasn’t ready,” she says, even though her mind is screaming that they cannot have this conversation now, that she’ll just make it worse. “I said thirty-five. I’m not — I’m nowhere close to being ready. And Lily being pregnant — I have to be there for her.”

“But—” He cuts himself off, falling silent. Rose can’t see his face. They’re just into an alley in a dirty, bright and loud city; behind her is neon lights and his face is in shadow. Hers too, probably.

“What?” she says.

“We weren’t using condoms,” he says. “The pill is only a 99% success rate.”

“I know.”

“I thought—” He falls silent again.

“ _What_?” she asks.

“I thought we were playing the odds. That you had considered the odds and thought that maybe a one percent chance was okay. That if it happened, you were okay with it.”

She feels her jaw drop. “ _That’s_ you thought we weren’t use condoms? Because we were _playing the odds_?”

“You knew I wanted kids!” he snaps, his voice raising enough that anyone passing by would hear it easily. “Why else would I take a risk like that?”  
“I don’t know! Should I have not agreed to it?”  
“If you didn’t want kids, you shouldn’t have taken the chance!”

“You asked me the first time while I was _tied up_!” She feels her own voice raising to a shout. “I was high on fucking endorphins, and I couldn’t have stopped you even if I hadn’t been! I would’ve agreed to next to anything!”

“You kept doing it!”

“I made a mistake! I did it because, sure, it’s better, and I didn’t realize you were so fucking desperate to have kids that you deliberately removed a layer of protection! If I’d known that was your logic, I never would’ve fucking done it in the first place!”

He reels back like she’d hit him, and her ribs ache with anger and grief. She can feel her relationship with her husband disintegrating, falling apart like ash in the wind, right in front of her. She is talking to her husband and he’s a stranger.

She can’t let herself hear another thing he says, because she thinks she might hit him, and she’s so horrified with the urge that she can’t confront it right now. Maybe never. She turns and walks away.

 

He doesn’t speak to her again on the trip. Not a single word.

 

He moves in with a friend, and takes his cat with him.

 

Rose lies alone in the dark, and presses her fingers to her stomach, and all she can think is, _what if_?


End file.
